by Tom Nolan
“ ‘My father was blind when he died at ninety-three’ ”: Actually Hen Sturm was ninety-two when he died.
“ ‘When Margaret’s health deteriorated’ ”: Easton interview with TN.
“ ‘We’ve had some recent trouble’ ”: Millar to Olding, received August 5, 1980, Princeton; typed copy, UCI.
“ ‘a writer has to know something special’ ”: Mignon T. Marsh, “You can call him Ross—or you can call him John, but this Macdonald is really Kenneth Millar,” NRTA Journal, March-April 1981.
“ ‘Margaret has the whole town in her mind’ ”: Mickey Friedman, “The first family of mystery writing,” San Francisco Examiner, May 19, 1980.
“ ‘This was in a memory course’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“ ‘In his book Black Money’ ”: Betty Phelps interview with TN.
“ ‘It’s the interplay of memory and intellect’ ”: Millar interview with Jerry Tutunjian, courtesy Jerry Tutunjian.
“ ‘It’s great to be backstopped by you people’ ”: Millar to Green, October 21, 1972, UCI.
“ ‘We all came out from under Hammett’s overcoat’ ”: Millar to Green, May 29, 1972, UCI.
“ ‘We all came out from under Hammett’s black mask’ ”: From Millar preface to “Find the Woman” in Maiden Murders/Mystery Writers of America (Harper, 1952).
“ ‘I am so prone to getting lost’ ”: Millar to Jeff Ring, July 17, 1974, typed copy, UCI.
“ ‘I was struck by your suggestion’ ”: Millar to Symons, September 10, 1974, courtesy of Julian Symons.
“ ‘Thank you for your interest’ ”: Millar to Linwood Barclay, January 19, 1976; typed copy, UCI.
“ ‘back Canada palpably to me’ ”: Millar to Barclay, March 18, 1976, courtesy of Linwood Barclay.
“a New York City high school teacher”: Joseph A. Gisler to Knopf, May 30, 1976, UCI.
“ ‘You state that “the other stories”’ ”: Penzler to Millar, June 28, 1977, UCI.
“ ‘A lot of the so-called literary material’ ”: Writer’s Yearbook 1981.
“ ‘Have I mentioned that that your reviews’ ”: Millar to Peter Wolfe, February 14, 1978, UCI.
“ ‘At the moment we have the pleasant duty’ ”: Millar to Linwood Barclay, August 27, 1978, courtesy of Linwood Barclay.
“ ‘Can I be slowing down?’ ”: Millar to Jerry Speir, November 27, 1979, courtesy of Jerry Speir.
“ ‘The less delightful people’ ”: Millar to Green, February 3, 1980. Quoted by Green in “A Tribute.”
“ ‘They ruined the book market’ ”: Friedman, “The first family of mystery writing.”
“ ‘Ken Millar was a very vulnerable-looking figure’ ”: Jim Pepper interview with TN.
“ ‘It’s not just an idle thing’ ”: Friedman, “The first family of mystery writing.”
“Bob Ford alerted Millar”: Ford to Millar, August 24, 1978, UCI.
“ ‘No, I can’t do that’ ”: John Milton, “Coincidentally: A Brief Memoir,” South Dakota Review, Spring 1986.
“ ‘I hope you will give yourself steady and serious care’ ”: Millar to Olding, received August 5, 1980, Princeton.
“ ‘And yet at lunch’ ”: Rich Jaroslovsky, “Ken Millar Alias Ross Macdonald, 1915–1983,” Wall Street Journal, July 15, 1983.
“ ‘She said several times that he hadn’t been well’ ”: Diana Cooper-Clark interview with TN. An audiotape of the Millar/Cooper-Clark interview is in the Millar Collection.
“ ‘a massive editing job’ ”: Diana Cooper-Clark, “Interview with Ross Macdonald,” Designs of Darkness: Interviews with Detective Novelists (Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1983).
“ ‘I think he might not have said anything to anyone’ ”: Ralph Sipper interview with TN.
“ ‘“I’d better not,” he said’ ”: Robert Easton, “A Tribute,” Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1983.
“ ‘He was very reserved’ ”: Ralph Sipper interview with TN.
“ ‘Use your good judgment’ ”: Ralph Sipper, “The Last Goodbye,” in Inward Journey.
“ ‘After the meeting one day’ ”: Gault interview with TN.
“ ‘I saw them once in the supermarket’ ”: Gayle Lynds interview with TN.
“ ‘I came away inspired, really’ ”: Wilcox interview with TN.
“ ‘It had something to do with spinal fluid’ ”: Easton interview with TN.
“ ‘a kind of smiling shell’ ”: Julian Symons, (London) Sunday Times, July 17, 1983.
“Self-Portrait”: Ross Macdonald, Self-Portrait: Ceaselessly into the Past, foreword by Eudora Welty, edited and with an afterword by Ralph B. Sipper (Capra Press, 1981).
“ ‘as perceptive, elegantly written and illuminating an analysis’ ”: Charles Champlin, “Ross Macdonald: detecting bits and pieces of the self in fiction,” Book Review, Los Angeles Times, September 6, 1981.
“ ‘a valuable and fascinating addition’ ”: Terry Teachout, National Review, November 26, 1982.
“ ‘Writing keeps me sane’ ”: Wayne Warga, “The Millars: Tale of Fortitude,” Los Angeles Times, February 11, 1982.
“ ‘Her attitude was wonderful’ ”: Wayne Warga interview with TN.
“ ‘I would try to get him to put on his shoes’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“ ‘Margaret told me of one conversation’ ”: William Ruehlmann interview with TN.
“ ‘Whenever a woman would enter the room’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“ ‘and tumbled tumbled free’ ”: “MIDNIGHT BLUE by Ross Macdonald” typescript page, UCI.
“ ‘John Ball told me’ ”: Ray Browne interview with TN.
“ ‘What is your name?’ ”: Eudora Welty interview with TN.
“ ‘As I hope my books make clear’ ”: Millar to Olding, February 4, 1968, Princeton.
“ ‘I could have wept’ ”: Unpublished Harker manuscript, courtesy of Herb Harker.
“ ‘a cerebrovascular accident’ ”: Steven Dougherty, “Ross Macdonald’s Legacy: Lew, a sleuth for all seasons,” Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, July 13, 1983.
“ ‘I told them I wouldn’t authorize any steps’ ”: Derrick Murdoch, “The mistress of thrillers,” Toronto Globe and Mail, May 22, 1984.
“the front page of the Wall Street Journal”: “Died,” Wall Street Journal, July 13, 1983.
“the Los Angeles Times (by Charles Champlin)”: Charles Champlin, “A Loss for Detective Fiction,” August 1, 1983.
“the Detroit News (Clifford A. Ridley)”: Clifford A. Ridley, “Ross Macdonald dies; created ‘Lew Archer,’ ” Detroit News, July 13, 1983.
“the Virginian-Pilot and the Ledger-Star (William Ruehlmann)”: William Ruehlmann, “Mystery master cast light into society’s dark alleys,” Virginian-Pilot and the Ledger-Star, August 14, 1983.
“the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner (Mikal Gilmore)”: Mikal Gilmore, “Macdonald raised hard-boiled fiction to the level of literature,” Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, July 18, 1983.
“the New York Times Book Review”: Frank MacShane, “Meeting Ross Macdonald,” New York Times Book Review, September 11, 1983.
“Paul Nelson . . . Rolling Stone”: Paul Nelson, “Ross Macdonald December 13th, 1915-July 11th, 1983,” Rolling Stone, September 1, 1983; reprinted (as “It’s All One Case”) in Inward Journey.
“a Peanuts comic strip”: August 11, 1983.
“for the Sunday Times”: July 17, 1983.
“and for London magazine”: Julian Symons, “A Transatlantic Friendship,” London, July 1983; reprinted in Inward Journey.
“ ‘It’s sad that we have to lose at the same moment’ ”: Richard Young, “Canadian critics mourn mystery writer MacDonald [sic],” Toronto Star, July 13, 1983.
; “the Toronto Globe and Mail”: July 16, 1983. See also July 13, 1983.
“the Kitchener-Waterloo Record”: July 15, 1983. See also July 13 and August 13, 1983.
“the alternative paper News & Review”: Week of July 21-27, 1983.
“ ‘Several years back’ ”: Santa Barbara News-Press, July 18, 1983.
“ ‘It was so strange’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“his ‘accommodation’ ”: Jerre Lloyd interview with TN.
“ ‘Macdonald’s narratives are beautifully built machines’ ”: Geoffrey O’Brien, Hardboiled America: The Lurid Years of Paperbacks (Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1981).
“ ‘In his last major novel, The Long Goodbye’ ”: John McAleer, Rex Stout: A Biography (Little, Brown, 1977).
“ ‘Macdonald’s achievement is wholly individual’ ”: Julian Symons, Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel, a History (Viking, 1985; Mysterious Press, 1992) (earlier title: Mortal Consequences).
“ ‘Ross Macdonald is one of the central authors’ ”: George Grella, Ross Macdonald entry, Contemporary Novelists: Third Edition (St. Martin’s Press, 1982).
“ ‘one of the splendid achievements in American fiction’ ”: Matthew J. Bruccoli, “Kenneth Millar (13 December 1915-11 July 1983),” Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1983.
“ ‘one of the best writers of his generation’ ”: MacShane, “Meeting Ross Macdonald.”
“Iris Murdoch”: Peter Wolfe to Millar, April 24 1974, UCI.
“Thomas Berger”: See Thomas Berger, “The Justice of Ross Macdonald’s Voice,” in Inward Journey.
“John Fowles”: From John Fowles’s afterword to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (John Murray and Jonathan Cape, 1974): “Conan Doyle belongs to the tale-tellers, in the long modern line from Poe to Ross Macdonald. . . .”
“Charles Portis”: Quoted by Lewis Nichols, “American Notebook,” New York Times Book Review, September 22, 1968.
“David Hare”: David Hare to Millar, undated (probably November, 1972), UCI.
“Stephen Sondheim”: Sondheim, interviewed by Anthony Shaffer, “Theater; Of Mystery, Murder and Other Delights,” New York Times, March 10, 1996: “one of the reasons I like Ross Macdonald so much is that his plots make sense.”
“Joyce Carol Oates”: Joyce Carol Oates, “The Simple Art of Murder,” New York Review of Books, December 21, 1995. Publication of a two-volume Raymond Chandler set by the Library of America prompted an Oates essay that included these sentences: “Of Chandler’s younger contemporaries and heirs, Ross Macdonald (1915-1983) is outstanding. . . . Lew Archer has learned from Philip Marlowe the arresting power of the well-turned simile, but in Archer’s voice language is more artfully restrained, less forced and outrageous and inclined to insult. . . . Where Chandler’s crammed and confusing mysteries are largely a matter of coincidence, motivated by human greed and rarely plausible when explained, Macdonald’s mysteries are thoughtfully plotted family dramas in which a malevolent past erupts into the present. A classically tragic, or a Freudian, determinism is the key to Macdonald’s finely honed puzzle-novels, which might be recommended even for readers with a temperamental aversion to the mystery-detective genre.”
“ ‘Then, in our hotel in Lomé’ ”: Lawrence Block, “My Life in Crime,” American Heritage, July/August 1993.
“ ‘I got to the used-book stores’ ”: Sarah Wright, “Dancing as Fast as He Can,” Boston Magazine, January 1994.
“ ‘The point of the stories wasn’t death’ ”: Unsigned editorial, “Ross Macdonald,” Washington Post, July 16, 1983.
“ ‘Archer, Macdonald’s narrator, thinks and sees in one-line poems’ ”: Thomas J. Roberts, An Aesthetics of Junk Fiction (University of Georgia Press, 1990).
“ ‘I don’t reread those books now for the story’ ”: Donald Davie interview with TN.
“ ‘With him a particular kind of crime story ended’ ”: Julian Symons, “Last of the classic crime-writers,” (London) Sunday Times, July 17, 1983.
“ ‘Not until I chanced on Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald’ ”: From Robin W. Winks, ed., Colloquium on Crime: Eleven Renowned Mystery Writers Discuss Their Work (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1986).
“ ‘I picked up a Ross Macdonald mystery’ ”: Dulcy Brainard, “Marcia Muller: ‘The Time Was Ripe,’ ” Publishers Weekly, August 8, 1994.
“also read Macdonald”: “An Interview with Sara Paretsky,” Armchair Detective, Summer 1991.
“put his name in one of her books”: Sara Paretsky, Guardian Angel (Delacorte Press, 1992), p. 149.
Other novelists who have mentioned Ross Macdonald in their fiction include Stephen Greenleaf (Book Case), Susan Isaacs (After All These Years), Paco Ignacio Taibo II (Life Itself), Peter McCabe (City of Lies), John Dunning (The Bookman’s Wake), and George C. Chesbro (Shadow of a Broken Man).
James Ellroy dedicated his 1984 novel, Blood on the Moon: “In Memory of KENNETH MILLAR 1915-1983.”
“in tribute to Macdonald she based Millhone in Santa Teresa”: Shelly Lowenkopf, “Santa Barbara Mystery Writers,” Santa Barbara News & Review, August 29, 1985.
“ ‘I was driving on Sunset Boulevard’ ”: Jonathan Kellerman interview with TN.
“ ‘Let’s be honest’ ”: Warner Books Macdonald promotional material, 1990.
“ ‘I owe him, as does every one of us’ ”: Robert B. Parker, “Heroes and Debts,” In Inward Journey.
“ ‘Ross Macdonald—on an emotional level—for me is the great teacher’ ”: James Ellroy interview, “A Matter of Crime, Vol. I.”
“Catalan writer Jaume Fuster”: See Nina King with Robin Winks, Crimes of the Scene: A Mystery Novel Guide for the International Traveler (St. Martin’s Press, 1997), pp 31-32.
“ ‘Among the Americans’ ”: P. D. James radio interview, KCRW-FM, Santa Monica, California, 1986.
“films of Blue City, The Three Roads, and The Ferguson Affair”:
Blue City: A Paramount Picture, 1986
screenplay by Lukas Heller and Walter Hill
“based on the novel by Ross Macdonald”
produced by William Hayward and Walter Hill
directed by Michelle Manning
starring Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy
The Three Roads was filmed as
Double Negative (aka Deadly Companion): UDO Communications/Quadrant Films of Toronto, 1986
screenplay by Thomas Hedley Jr.
produced by Jerome S. Simon, David Main
directed by George Bloomfield
starring Michael Sarrazin and Susan Clark
The Ferguson Affair was filmed for television as
Criminal Behavior: shown on ABC-TV in 1992
starring Farrah Fawcett and A. Martinez
“a seven-and-a-half-hour, full-cast adaptation of Sleeping Beauty”: Commercially available from Audio Editions/The Audio Partners. In 1998, KCRW-FM was producing a similar unabridged adaptation of The Zebra-Striped Hearse.
“ ‘I don’t know whether I deserve this award’ ”: “Edgar Days,” The Third Degree, June/July 1983.
“ ‘I couldn’t bear to live in the house anymore’ ”: Ed Gorman, “Interview: Margaret Millar,” Mystery Scene, May 1989.
“Millar and others were chased by a bulldozer”: Millar to Green, January 16, 1973, UCI: “almost got run down by a bulldozer yesterday: four of my companions were knocked over: the driver was arrested! we’re not winning but we’re not losing either.” See also “Rain fails to stop grading at old Hammond Estate,” Santa Barbara News-Press, January 16, 1973.
“she spoke approvingly of . . . Jack Kevorkian”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“ ‘I wish other people would get as sensible’ ”: Gorman, “Interview: Margaret Millar.”
“The poets . . . wrote poems”:
Reynolds Price: ‘The Core
: for Ross Macdonald,” in Inward Journey.
Donald Davie: “On Hearing About Ross Macdonald,” in Inward Journey; retitled “Alzheimer’s Disease: for Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald),” in Collected Poems (University of Chicago Press, 1990).
Donald Davie: “A Measured Tread/for Kenneth Millar dead,” in Collected Poems.
Diane Wakoski: “George Washington and Lew Archer in the Desert,” in Inward Journey.
“ ‘I thought he was a brave man, very brave’ ”: Davie interview with TN.
“ ‘where, in the destructive element immersed’ ”: Millar to Symons, March 6, 1973, courtesy of Julian Symons.
“a certain seal waited for Millar”: Brad Darrach interview with TN.
“ ‘In the end as in the beginning’ ”: Robert Easton, “A Tribute,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1983.
Afterword
1 Kenneth Millar letter to Eudora Welty, April 6, 1971, from Meanwhile There Are Letters: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and Ross Macdonald, edited by Suzanne Marrs and Tom Nolan (New York: Arcade, 2015).
2 Jerre Lloyd, “Thoughts from a Reader Who Knew Macdonald,” customer review, www.amazon.com page for Ross Macdonald: A Biography (New York: Scribner, 1999), July 24, 2000.
3 Kenneth Millar to Matthew J. Bruccoli, September 12, 1975; Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine Library, Kenneth Millar Papers. Used by permission.
4 Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald) interviews with Paul Nelson, from It’s All One Case: The Illustrated Ross Macdonald Archives, by Paul Nelson and Kevin Avery (Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2015); available from fantagraphics.com.
5 Ibid.
6 Ross Macdonald address to Popular Culture Association, December 1973; audiotape provided to author by Ray B. Browne. Used by permission.
7 Lloyd, “Thoughts from a Reader Who Knew Macdonald.”
8 Scott Timberg, “Lew Archer Is Back on the Case,” Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2007, p. E1/E10.
9 Scott Timberg, “Can’t Wait for ‘True Detective 2’? Dive into Ross Macdonald’s California Noir Masterpieces,” Salon, May 16, 2015.
10 Scott Timberg, “Ross Macdonald and California,” CultureCrash, http://www.artsjournal.com/culturecrash, December 11, 2009.